Monthly Archives: January 2015

I knew I wanted to write about a girl in a caravan. One of those round-looking ones that are so ridiculously cute they just cry out to be the setting of a short story. But there was a problem:

I knew nothing about caravans.

The story I was writing was for the Newcastle Herald short story competition late last year. I had the bare bones in my head, but I needed to add the setting. And that setting needed to be a caravan, preferably in a pastel colour, and it needed to ooze with history.

Friday Fictioneers is a challenge set by Rochelle Fields where writers around the world create 100 word stories inspired by the one image. For more information see: https://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/23-january-2015

It was Sherlock Holmes’ birthday yesterday. If he’d been alive today, and more importantly if he’d been real, he would have turned an impressive 161. That shows just how long ago these stories were written.

Yet the detective himself is so well known among people of today. I bet that even my nephew knows that when someone turns up to a fancy dress party with a magnifying glass and a tweed hat that they’ve come dressed as Sherlock.

The detective from the 1880s is still well-known today

But Conan Doyle, the author himself, didn’t seem that keen on the adventures of Sherlock. He even tried to kill him off at one stage in a case called The Final Problem, but due to public outcry he resurrected the detective in later books. Sometimes characters just want to write themselves and there’s nothing you can do about it.